Tagged

From my window birds storm the red-berry tree. 
Someone has placed a tag on the branch to tell us 
either its name or where we are on the path. 
Loons fly with bright blue snaps, turtles 
with wrapped ankles plod and are counted 
and you, or what remains of you after illness, 
are tagged and tucked into the ivory shroud. 

I wake remembering you, air-lifted to us in Georgia 
with a life-threatening fever and rigid seizure. 
All the quiet talk about ponds and foolish attempts 
to explain pond danger to your husband. 
He re-creates the picnic, your artless 
splashing and one long underwater dive. 

I ticket you with your name and date of birth, 
while in the hall your husband huddles with your children. 
He later does what no one else does, demands to see you 
in the morgue, demands you be unraveled 
so he can check the spelling on your toe marker. 
He and I alone in the basement with your nude body, 
my hand, which he allows on his back, electric with grief. 

Asleep in the lounge, your children have already begun dreams 
where they are sucked into dark water, the kind of water 
where parasites wait to hook into nostrils, 
wait to travel the short space between the nose and the brain. 
Eventually they lose all love for nature, 
and when they see tagged creatures washed ashore 
they feel a small revenge or at least, a small recognition.